


Sunset

by MissCricket



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCricket/pseuds/MissCricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunset was Nathaniel's favourite time of day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset

Sunset was Nathaniel’s favourite time of day.

As a young man he had fond memories of riding back through the gates of Vigil’s Keep after a day of hunting, bringing with him the spoils of his day. He had little love for the killing of it, he did not crave the blood and the death as some did, but to come home empty handed was not an option. Failure was not an option for Howes and his father would see it as a day wasted.

He found peace in the challenge of hunting, of quietly slipping through trees, the soft leather of his boots padding silently over the knarled tree roots of the forest, the soft, comforting creak of his bow as he sighted at his prey. There was a balance here, hunter and prey and he never killed anything for the sport of it. No his catches were always animals that would eventually end up on the dinner tables of the Keep’s halls.

Riding home, he would still feel that peace from the woods, greeting the men and women of the Keep as he passed, and seeing his home lit up with the soft yellows of the end of days sun.

As a squire he had taken to seeing the sunsets on the battlements of whichever city state in the Free Marches he was in. In Starkhaven he would usually sit beside the youngest Vael, Sebastian. The two of them would swap stories, although to be fair most of the good ones were Sebastian’s. He had an easy charm about him, an irrepressible vivacity which drew people to him, a wickedness about him that promised trouble…but fun at the same time.

They should not have gotten along as well as they did, but somehow they did. He had been sorry to leave Starkhaven, and he had missed the young man’s easy friendship in the years to follow.

As a Howe returning to a land no longer so welcoming he had sailed into Amaranthine harbour, seeing the familiar roofs glinting in the light. He had felt relief, relief that he was home at last and determination to get to the bottom of everything. His father was dead, murdered, and the lands which had been his to inherit by right were signed over to the Grey Wardens. His father’s murderers.

The sunset had been welcome because it meant he had little reason to linger in the city…when all the answers to his problems could be found at the Keep, shrouded in the cover of night.

Now as a Grey Warden, he found pleasure sitting on the fence to the training yard, perching there on the worn wooden beams that had been there for as long as he could remember, and watch as the young recruits trained under the watchful eyes of their instructors. Sunset reminded him that Amaranthine had ever and always been his home, and the home of his family. Never would he have expected to count the Grey Wardens as his family, but now…now he couldn’t imagine anything else.

So it was with a small smile that he sat on the sun warmed timber, listening to Oghren’s voice rumbling away as he tried to explain some technique to the recruits, interrupted by Sigrun who was continually correcting him. So it was that he closed his eyes, just feeling the last rays of the sun on his skin, listening to Velanna and Anders bicker over the instruction to the mage apprentices they had been sent, and listening to Justice’s exasperated sighs as the two devolved into insults and then, finally, the flicking of small balls of fire. Listening to the Commander laugh from the battlements, watching them from the position on the walls.

Yes…sunset was definitely Nathaniel’s favourite time of day.  



End file.
